Senate Campaigner Uses His Millions Very Effectively

When Jon S. Corzine began talking about running for the United States Senate from New Jersey early this year, there were at least 300 million reasons for fellow Democrats to listen.

Mr. Corzine, 52, was about to retire as chief executive of Goldman Sachs & Company,. with a $300 million fortune, and he had pledged to spend as much as necessary to run a campaign to replace Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a Democrat who is retiring.

Money alone does not guarantee political success. And recent political history is full of examples of candidates with more money than sense of how to use it. But Mr. Corzine's journey from political newcomer to a front-runner for the Democratic nomination is a case study in the power of money in politics and how to use it effectively.

Mr. Corzine's status as a major political donor helped him win the guidance of Orin Kramer, a financier and Democratic fund-raiser, who gave advice about navigating the factions of the state's Democratic party and exploiting its divisions.

Mr. Corzine's fortune has allowed him to assemble a team of experienced campaign strategists. It has also helped him secure the good will of some of New Jersey's cash-starved local officials by making contributions to the campaign to elect Democratic candidates in the state's Assembly races this fall.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Corzine's money helped dissuade several formidable candidates -- Democrats and Republicans -- from running because they were daunted by the prospect of raising $15 million for the campaign, roughly $30,000 a day from now to Election Day 2000.

Mr. Corzine has not scared off his two main Democratic rivals, former Gov. Jim Florio and Tom Byrne, the former state party chairman, who have made Mr. Corzine's wealth an issue, accusing him of trying to buy the Senate race. But New Jersey's two most prominent Republicans, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, have each cited the rigors of raising money as a major factor in their decision not to run.

''One of the remarkable things about this race is that multimillionaires like Governor Whitman and Senator Lautenberg found it too rich for their blood and left it to the megamillionaires,'' said Clifford Zukin, a political science professor at Rutgers University.

''Ultimately, he will be judged on the message he delivers,'' he said. ''But to people who have paid their dues in the political system with years of service, it might be difficult to see someone pay it with cash.''

Mr. Corzine has more than money going for him. With his unassuming demeanor and rags-to-riches history of rising from clerk to chief executive, he has convinced many party officials that he can connect with New Jersey's middle-class voters. He has begun to lay out a decidedly liberal platform based on the bedrock Democratic issues of gun control, expanded health care coverage and increased support for public education.

Nationally, the candidate who spent the most money won nearly 95 percent of Federal elections in 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that tracks campaign finance issues.

Political analysts say New Jersey is particularly open to well-financed political novices. The Governor and two United States Senators are the only offices elected statewide, so there are no stepping-stone offices.

Still, in several recent national races, and contests in other states, wealthy businessmen have spent millions underwriting their own candidacies only to produce costly flops. Two Presidential hopefuls, Ross Perot and Steve Forbes, spent tens of millions of dollars on their failed candidacies. In California, an airline executive, Al Checchi, spent $38 million on the 1998 race for governor and lost in the Democratic primary.

So the challenge for Mr. Corzine has been to spend not only freely, but wisely.

Mr. Corzine's past generosity, including more than $1 million in donations to Democrats in the last decade, paid dividends even before most party insiders knew his name. And before deciding to enter the race, Mr. Corzine won the encouragement of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, national Democratic figures like Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan and the tacit backing of Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey.

Among Democratic officeholders in New Jersey, however, who had received far less financial support from him than their counterparts in Washington, Mr. Corzine, who has lived in Summit for years, was still viewed as an outsider. He was also considered an extremely risky proposition as a candidate because he had little experience making speeches, holding news conferences or using television to deliver a message.

Mr. Kramer began to bridge that gap by introducing Mr. Corzine to State Senators John Lynch and Raymond Lesniak, two of the power brokers in the New Jersey's Democratic Party.

''The first thing I said to him was that he has to shave his beard,'' Mr. Lesniak recalled. ''It's conventional wisdom that voters subconsciously think a candidate with a beard has something to hide. But he said, 'No, I wouldn't be comfortable.' So immediately you like the guy. I could see he was down-to-earth.''

Mr. Corzine eventually passed the party leaders' ''sniff test,'' and agreed that the campaign should emphasize his longstanding support of gun control and increased health care coverage. Then he hit the state's back roads to try to convince the army of party operatives and interest groups that he shared many of their political stances and would champion them in the Senate.

Mr. Corzine met with scores of Democratic county leaders, and advocates on environmental, civil rights and union issues. They made a receptive audience because many were searching for an alternative to former Gov. Jim Florio, whose decision in 1990 to ram a $2.8 billion tax increase through the Legislature to meet a court order on school financing helped Republicans win both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office.

An early public speaking fiasco stirred new fears. In mid-March, Mr. Corzine accepted an invitation from the state party chairman, Tom Giblin, to speak to a group of 250 Essex County Democrats.

''I thought the prepared remarks were good,'' Mr. Corzine said. ''Unfortunately the seven or eight people in the front row who fell asleep during my speech didn't agree.''

The campaign co-chairman, Steve Goldstein, then flew to Iowa with Mr. Corzine for a four-day crash course in public speaking and mastering television. When Mr. Corzine returned, his speaking style, while hardly rousing, began receiving better reviews.

But Mr. Florio, whose campaign raised more than $600,000 in the first half of the year, was busy trying to lock up the nomination early. Cashing in on a career's worth of political chits, he won endorsements from 11 of the state's 21 county leaders, important victories because New Jersey's county leaders decide which candidate's name appears under the party banner on election ballots. A flurry of anonymous ''attack faxes'' also began surfacing in the offices of reporters and loyal Democrats, pointing out Mr. Corzine's failure to vote in some primaries and occasional donations to Republicans.

Mr. Corzine responded to the faxes and continued traveling to diners, union halls and Devils' hockey games to woo party leaders in the state's most populous counties -- Essex, Middlesex, Bergen, Union and Hudson -- where the bulk of Democratic primary voters live and who have not committed to Mr. Florio.

Mr. Corzine also opened his checkbook. He donated more than $25,000 to the fund for Democrats running for New Jersey's 80 Assembly seats and pledged to use his Wall Street connections to raise another $100,000. In Washington, he has also made $120,000 in contributions to the Democratic National Committee this year.

By mid-May, the substantial number of officials looking for any alternative to Mr. Florio began to coalesce around Mr. Corzine as it became increasingly apparent that only a candidate who could afford a huge media campaign could counter Mr. Florio's name recognition and party contacts.

Yet many Democrats leaning toward Mr. Corzine hesitated before officially announcing their support because of previous party entanglements. Mr. Lesniak, chairman of Union County, and Mr. Lynch, chairman of Middlesex, could not publicly endorse Mr. Corzine because the Congressman from their district, Frank Pallone Jr., was still considering a race.

But in early July, Mr. Pallone dropped out of the race, saying he could not raise enough money to finance a credible campaign. Mr. Lesniak and Mr. Lynch later endorsed Mr. Corzine.

To Curtis Fisher, executive director of New Jersey Public Interest Group, it is clear that ''you don't even have to spend the big money for it to work for you -- just having the money tilts the entire playing field.''

Mr. Corzine has since assembled a high-priced collection of campaign operatives: Susan Estrich, campaign manager of Michael Dukakis's Presidential campaign in 1988; Media and Message, the New Jersey consulting firm which ran the gubernatorial campaign of Jim McGreevey, who lost narrowly to Mrs. Whitman in 1997, and Regina Thomas, a political consultant who has helped increase voter turnout in minority neighborhoods for Democrats.

Mr. Corzine also hired two participants in Mr. Checchi's failed race for governor in California, the consultant Robert Shrum and the polling firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland, who are reported to have warned Mr. Corzine's advisers how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Checchi campaign.

Mr. Florio and Mr. Byrne have tried to turn Mr. Corzine's financial strength into a political weakness, by calling for voluntary spending limits. ''I don't think the party's nomination should be auctioned off to the highest bidder,'' Mr. Florio has said.

Mr. Corzine says that it is unfair for well-known candidates to call for spending limits and that recent races have made it clear that money alone cannot win a race. This week he began a $500,000 wave of radio advertisements intended to raise his profile and rally support for Democratic Assembly candidates.

''In the end, this race will be decided based on the ideas I'm able to articulate, not the money in my pocket or anyone else's pocket,'' he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Corzine's newfound credibility and deep pockets have persuaded some Republicans to look for a megamillionaire of their own. Faced with a crowded field of little-known politicians, some Republicans are trying to recruit Lewis M. Eisenberg, Mr. Corzine's former partner at Goldman Sachs and executive director of the Port Authority.

''All of us who've been around for a while know that a little bit of time and a lot of money can buy name recognition,'' Mr. Eisenberg said this week. ''So if I do decide to do this, I will invest some of my own money and raise enough money to get the job done.''